Superior Ward Dungeon – Lost Vale

Lost Vale is technically speaking the last dungeon in Warhammer that offers a warded set, and in many ways despite its bugs it is among the best designed dungeons.

RR50-59

The Lost Vale (LV)

I apologize in advance for the pictures – my computer wiped so I lost all my screenies and had to do an impromptu run today but only got through two wings so had to steal pictures of someone else’s middle wing. Also I tank on an Ironbreaker so my angling on the screenies is even worse =\.

Time Commitment – Lost Vale in a well-attuned group can take 2 hours (that’s my fastest), most other groups take around four hours, some groups with much misfortune take six hours. I can say that on my first run we spent 8 hours on the left wing boss, so there is a definite learning curve.

Layout – Lost Vale is a three wing dungeon, the left “Thronvale Wilds”, the right wing “Blackwillow Forest”, and the middle wing “Palace Gardens and Alarielle’s Palace”. Each wing has a wing boss which is a lord, and a few mini-bosses which are all heroes.

Design – Lost Vale is a dungeon requiring Greater Wards and is a six-man instance. It also has a quest line mandatory to finish the dungeon (well to get access to the wings) – for Order that quest is “Pure of Heart”.

Boss Mechanics –

Left Wing 1st Mini-Boss – Azranok – The first boss we come upon is a giant lizard. As with most bosses in LV, she has an aoe cleave and also a toughened skin buff which can be shattered. She will summon baby lizards at around 20% to help her and if you take too long, her mate will come to help her so you’ll have two heroes on your hands.

Left Wing 2nd Mini-Boss – Malghor Greathorn – The second boss is a beastman gor. Aside from hitting really hard his mechanic is that his aggro is generated by whoever touches his pink musk puddles floating on the ground. Should a puddle touch someone they immediately get aggro.

Left Wing 3rd Mini-Boss – Horgulul – She is one big ugly female. Surprisingly most of the bosses in LV are angry females. Naturally she has cleaves (and cleavage… and an arm sticking outta her shoulder…) but her main trick is that every 25% of her health she will aoe punt everyone away and summon maggots to help her.

Left Wing Boss – Dralel The Whitefire Matron – Once a friendly spider of Lost Vale, the dark magics corrupted her and made her the buggiest (pun intended) boss in LV. This giant spider will give you nightmares, either because you hate spiders or because she is so damn buggy. Her mechanics are multiple. Once the fight starts baby spiders begin spawning all around the room by the dozens and moving towards her; when they reach her she consumes them and her dps increases by 5% (so you kill them before they reach her). Additionally she will randomly punt someone back verrrrrry far and web them so they can’t move for like 20 seconds – fortunately by defeating Horgulul you get a Torch of Lileath which will burn through the web. Every 20% of her health she will aoe punt everyone in the room and web them, during which time the tank does not generate aggro so she will run towards someone random, so the tank has to burn super quickly and taunt immediately. She naturally hits very hard and cleaves.

Right Wing Mini-Boss 1 – Chul Earthkeeper – This fight is pretty fun simply because his mechanic cracks me up. Aside from the standard cleave Chul will randomly pick someone far away and hurl them into a pit full of lizards down below, they then have to run up with a train of lizards in stow, often only to be thrown back =D

Right Wing Optional Boss – Larg the Devourer – So this guy isn’t required for the quest line, but he does drop some nice gear. His main mechanic is that he will bullrush the cave entrance and knock whoever is outside off the ledge down below, so everyone has to get in the cave; if everyone is in the cave he will never do this. He also does an aoe ground pound which you pretty much just heal through.

Right Wing Mini-Boss 2 – Butcher Gutbeater – For many groups this is one of the hardest fights in the Lost Vale. Our boss of choice is a ogre butcher, and his assistant is a gnoblar. This fight usually requires two tanks, though it can be single-tanked. There are two mechanics at work here: 1)as the fight progresses the gnoblar will enrage slowly and hit harder and harder, so naturally you want to kill it before it hits too hard, however when it dies a new gnoblar immediately spawns and has to be picked up, and 2)every time you kill a gnoblar the butcher gains an enrage state so you want to limit the amount of gnoblars you kill. It leads to a juggling of health points, but most groups kill the gnoblar every 25% of the butcher’s health.

Right Wing Mini-Boss 3 – Gorak the Ancient – This is a massive dragon-ogre and he is also among the hardest bosses in LV. First off he hits super hard. He has two phases, phase 1)hit super hard, phase 2) lightning. During the lightning phase it will hit harder if you are within 30ft of a group mate, so you have to spread out. Fortunately he aoe knocksback before lightning starts so you should be spread out. He cycles these two phases so its a pretty tough fight. After about three cycles he will enrage so its also a race and a very melee dps unfriendly fight (because they can’t dps during the lightning phase due to being forced to spread out).

Right Wing Boss – Sarathain the Worldbearer – The wing boss for the right wing is a giant treelord. Fortunately he is super easy. He has several mechanics at work. First of all during the whole fight regular animal mobs will spawn and generally make it for your healers and give them a hard time. Secondly on his island he will have a ring of thorns around him which will damage anyone standing hear him every second. Thirdly, there are three Darkpromise casters situated around the Worldbearer (who is friendly to the High Elves, they’re corrupting him) and you have 45 seconds to kill them or they heal him to full health; during this period he will cast a gusting wind about 100 feet around him (a good measurement of distances is the water) and it will one-shot anyone that it touches. Also he will randomly root players preventing them from taking action so a healer has to cleanse them of this root. So those are his two phases 1)thorns and dps 2)kill champs and avoid him. After the timer ticks down you go back on the island for phase 1. Cycle the two phases and you kill him.

Middle Wing Mini-Boss 1 – Zaar the Painseeker– This guy for all intents and purposes is a tank and spank. Cleave and hard hitting, his only mechanic is he will throw someone in one of the four cages around the room during which time they can do nothing and slowly die – you break the cage to free them. If your group is on top of their stuff no one should die during this fight. I humble acknowledge that I once died on this fight when my group left me to die because I made fun of them.

Middle Wing Mini-Boss 2 – The Darkpromise Beast -This is the same creature you fought on the beach at the start of the run, except this time it’s for real. His only mechanic is his disease which he spreads around (like syphilis). It ticks normally on one person (by normally I mean a few hundred to 1k) and if they do not have someone within a few feet to trasmit the disease to, then it ticks much harder. So the idea for this fight is to stack on eachother and spread the disease around.

Middle Wing Boss – Sechar The Darkpromise Chieftain – Mr. Pain and Pleasure. So there are two main features to this fight and a mini feature. First off the mini-feature is that trash mobs will spawn the whole fight for your tanks to deal with. The two main features of Sechar are his Pain and Pleasure auras. During pain you take more damage the closer you are to your group mates, so the idea is to spread out, at least 30 feet (like Gorak). During pleasure you take more damage the further apart you are, so you stack on each other (like for the Darkpromise Beast). He cycles these two phases every 30 seconds and other than his super hard hits and cleave, that’s all there is to him.

Final Boss – N’kari, Keeper of Secrets – The final boss and boy is the fight worthy a final boss (not like every other dungeon final boss), and of course an angry big-tittied woman (that’s what my guild calls her). First off there are three champion mobs holding Queen Alarielle sapping her of her life (when you first do the fight there are four, but if you wipe then its only three). Killing them will cause the fight to begin and after the last one dies N’kari will appear in 30 seconds. Each champion drops a stone tablet which you will need for the fight – usually the dps and off tank pick them up and throw them on their hotbar. Like all other bosses, she has two phases – her first phase she will cleave hard, hit hard, throw people up in the air and cause them to deal elemental damage to all players within 30feet when they fall (if you detaunt her while in the air, the damage you deal to your party members is far lower), and she casts purple and green puddles on the ground which are bad (purple does damage, green steals action points). Then she will begin channeling dealing 500 damage every half second to all players – to interrupt her channeling you have someone click on one of the channeling stones you picked up from the mobs. Also her channeling is an indication that she is going into phase two. So two things happen at once – she begins to channel and colored orbs appear around the room which help you survive phase 2. Purple increases your tankiness and causes instant aggro, blue increases your healiness, red increases your dpsiness. During phase two she will instantly aggro on whoever got the purple orb, or if no one did hopefully on your tank. Two champions will spawn at the hallway you entered the room from and you must kill them asap; killing them helps end phase two (or it use to until Mythic bugged/fixed that). During phase two she will use an ability called ‘devastate’ which is an unmitigatable/blockable/anythingable-justsuckitupable 7k damage. If you have the purple orb and have 10k more health you can be healed through it. Kill the champs, survive the devastate and she goes back into phase one. She will once again do her channeling but the second time she will not go into phase two but start one again. Only after the third channeling will she go into phase two again. After the fourth channeling she will not go into phase two but will enrage shortly afterwards. Thats N’kari =)

Loot Mechanics – The Darkpromise set from Lost Vale consists of six pieces. The belt and glove drop from the mini-bosses. The Darkpromise Boots drop from Dralel in the left wing. The Darkpromise Shoulders drop from Sarathaine in the right wing. The Darkpromise helm drops off of Sechar in the middle wing, and N’kari drops the Darkpromise chest. Each wing/final boss drops two class-specific pieces of their associated gear.

Lockouts – 4 days 20 hours, longest lockout for a dungeon.

Lore – The Lost Vale is actually the Gaen Vale, the Everqueen’s (High Elf Queen) retreat and actually this dungeon is pulled out of the lore believe it or not (High Elf army book)! This incident refers to when N’kari invaded Ulthuan and was defeated by Aenarion and swore vengeance against his kin. She then came back and duked it out with Tyrion and Teclis at the Shrine of Asuryan and lost, go figure. Once more she is sent to kidnap the Everqueen for Malekith and kill her, for if the Everqueen dies, Ulthuan perishes. Alarielle was given up for lost when Tyrion and Teclis came to her aid and saved the day. N’kari fails. Mythic gets +1 lore point.

Overall Rating – 4.5/5 Lost Vale is really a well designed dungeon and if its bugs were ever polished out it would be great. The bosses all have unique mechanics. The loot drop-table isn’t horrible and is not dependent on the city’s rating. Artistically its wonderful. None of the boss fights are a dry dull run and even a well seasoned group can wipe a few times in LV. Its main downfalls are once again the bugs (especially the mandatory quest), and the long lockout timer.

And I agree, LV is my favorite of all the dungeons. Pretty, well-thought-out, interesting every time! And… even with the bugs, probably the smoothest running instance in the game.

There are a few bugs, like the issue with the sprites in the right wing (they spawn if you don’t have a *recent* copy of the Worldbearer branch… if you deleted your most recent one, you’re probably SOL…), and of course the Queen B**** of Spiders is buggy… the rest of it really isn’t bad though. Props to Mythic on this one, definitely.